In light of keeping things slow

So I realised I been burning myself out. 700 Kanji to date seems impressive, but my recall rate is probably 80%, at least based off today’s revision. I plan to revise 100 Kanji a day till I get to 700, and then continue knocking them out at rapid pace. If doing full time Kanji revision, then the rate I was going was not a problem, but balancing life, work, interviews, etc just made me burn out. 

I think my interview went well today, made everyone laugh a lot so that’s always good. Not sure if they will hire me but I will find out in a week. Going to get an early night today as have another early morning wake up. And Japanese tomorrow, YAY!

So I much needed break week, hopefully I can stay on target and revise my 2000 Kanji in 3 months, but I want to be able to remember them all too! 

Let’s see what this every changing approach brings.

Unhappy, need reviewing!

Most of the day I sent worrying about what “casual smart” meant form my interview tomorrow. Settled on more smart then casual.

Revised upto 700 Kanji but only had time to review till 670. Also I will spend a few days cementing the 700 Kanji before moving on as some of them have started to slip, since I opted for more auditory stories from 3-400+, only realising my mistake yesterday. In short if the Kanji aren’t visual, there isn’t any point in the Heis…method and your basically learning by rote. Thankfully I’ve caught my mistake and hopefully it will improve the situation now before it’s too late. 

Interview today so relatively early night.

Fighting! 

Although I did learn the days of the week, which was made easier by learning the Kanji. yay.

650 Kanji.

Today was not idea, only managed 20 more. Basically I did not revise during the day, which meant I tried to learn it all in my Anki session. The result? It’s 4am, and I’m only halfway through. The lesson? Revise during the day first!

To be fair, I been mending my laptop which had a few setbacks but is OK now, needs a new graphics cards but it will do for now. I’ll pester insurance people later. And my mother wanted me to cook with her (to learn), which took 2 hours or so. I’ve learnt…cooking takes more time then I’m prepared to waste. Raw fish FTW!

Got a busy day tomorrow, but will try and make up for the Kanji I missed today and aim near 700 or so. Need to ready interview clothes. Argh! Will post my “method” to date. Feel like I’ve got the hang of this now.

630 Kanji..a quick post coz it’s pitch black in this room

So 630 Kanji today. woot! All was going well with my Anki revision and then I realised coz I’m repairing my laptop my Anki didn’t synchronise, so I was repeating my revision from 2 days ago…ORZ….so had to syc it and it kinda continued in a fluid fashion but meant I only got to 610 Kanji,, so had to add another 20 or so to make 630 (there were also 5 extra not covered in the book). 

So a long night of revision…03:18…my brother asleep so the light off in the room, laptop barely illumining the keyboard. Did finally see two primitives that I kept seeing but didn’t know what they meant, they were state of mind (can’t find an example of the primitive by itself), and 心 heart. Heart appears a lot in other Kanji so I’m glad it finally came up.

Another 35 tomorrow and need to pick out my interview clothes…smart casual w/o trainers. Sigh. 

600 Kanji! Sensei Wakaranai…

So I missed a post! Nooo. 600 Kanji last night, and today was a revision day. which went so and so as I only got through 50 or so Kanji, and that was on the bus home. But it was a nice break at my gf’s house, had I stayed over again I could have revised the last 100-200 Kanji but some family stuff came up so home I came.

Nothing new to add, 600 Kanji reached, no Idea which part of my head all the information is going, paranoid I’ll stuff in too many ridiculous stories and end up stranger than I am already but, well there’s only 3 ways to find out.

Also when I’m done with the Kanji I think I want to start reading the diary of Aya Kitou in Japanese. She started writing as a teen so hopefully it won’t be too hard (I know high school level is N2 which is 1000 Kanji and a heck of a lot more grammar than I know but hopefully by then I’ll be a bit more grammar savy). Reading Japanese novels is one of my goals with language mastery so I think I should try and make a start somewhere.

Also I learned a new phrase, Wakaranai which means “I don’t know”. I knew Wakarimasen which is like a formal version (I learnt it is as “I don’t understand”). Hopefully I can pull it off casually In Japanese classes next Tuesday and surprise my Sensei. 

Sensei, wakaranai….

kekeke.

 

565 Kanji

565 Kanji completed last night. So the Anki revision seems to be where I really learn the Kanji, my day revision tends to not stick, but in some cases it does especially with the fact I can make up my own stories now. 

Will get to 600 today. And hopefully another review day, or I might soldier on and try and absorb as much Kanji as possible. Job interview next week Monday and Japanese on Tuesday evening. So finally an eventful week coming up.

Watched a documentary called White light/ black rain today about the survivors of Hirsohima and Nagasaki…made me cry a few times…just….wow….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wCmzymAbEs

Anyway’s lets get on with this. 

533 Kanji.

Reached 533 Kanji today. Kind of shaky on some of the ones that have come up, but feel quite good about the older Kanji. Stories are helping and I’m sticking the really persistent ones up in my room, but limiting this to the one or two I keep failing to get, so I don’t have a wall covered in Kanji, but not a bad idea for the primitives I guess, since most tend to lack stories.

Also started to make some paper flash cards by dividing thin cheap paper (the only one I can afford :P) into 32 squares (by folding 5 times equally) and righting the Kanji in the square with the keyword underneath the Kanji. Idea being I will them up, shuffle them and then be able to revise them on the go, using a wad at a time. Want to be able to recall a Kanji by just seeing the keyword or remember the keyword from the Kanji, without having to think too hard, so constant repetition will help I hope. Also this is good for revising Kanji that aren’t in the older book I am using (the new Kanji that Anki keeps testing me on).

Not much else to say, lot’s of insects today. Also RTK is now only giving me primitives and no plots, so you have to make your own stories up. Which I prefer, cuts down revision time and I can let my imagination flow which I am better at. For the tricky ones I just look at koohii stories and pick one or modify my own. It’s better to modify Kanji stories based on what comes to your head first, i.e. for single I think of women straight away. The two primitives that make the Kanji up are wild dogs and insect. So I imagine a women being hounded by men who act like wild dogs and there a million men like this, almost like insects (I’m picturing lots of people from a skyscraper or even likening men to ants). And in this way the Kanji sticks.

Maybe I will do a full post on the RTK method in the book I am using, if people aren’t familiar with it yet.

35 more tomorrow 🙂 Fighting.

Review day

Unfortunately I was a lot more busy today than I planned to be, so only managed to review up to 400 Kanji, well from 300-400 i.e.100 Kanji. I’ll have to do the rest tomorrow and learn the next 33. Lot’s of appointments tomorrow as well (well 2 but that’s a lot in one day), so expecting a tiring day. Will definitely be sleep deprived 🙂

Fighting! Look like I’ll be starting work in a few weeks whether I like it or not, but I need the money. Time to earn some clams.

500 Kanji in 20 days!

So I hit the 500 Kanji milestone today. So in theory I’m 1/4 the way there already. Woohoo. I seem to not be able to recall the last 1-200 Kanji though…so as usual tomorrow will be my re-revision day as I try to drill the Kanji into my head.

I also think the fact that the book only gives you plots that I am struggling to recall the Kanji as the whole method relies on imagination, and the koohii stories aren’t always as memorable as the heisb ones. They tend to be clearer, but not memorable.

I also had a look at the grade 1 Kanji and it is cool that I know most of them, there are a few that have not come up yet, so that’s how I know the RTK is working. I just need to spend more time playing with memorable stories, as this makes recalling Kanji a breeze and will benefit me in the long run.

Will try writing a letter soon, like how was your summer, mine was fine. I don’t have the grammar to do it confidently yet but I can at least recognise the Kanji for summer. Also my Japanese lessons starts again week after next and I wonder if I will be able to keep up both Kanji revision and lessons and work….AGHRHHH

Finally a note on Anki. I start my Anki revision at 11.30pm, it is now 2.30am, so it took 3 hours! WTH, this is a normal Anki session and it’s killing me. It’s great that I can re-revise Kanji and freak out that I can’t remember most of them (-_-) but seriously, it’s way too long…Need to find a more time efficient way of re-revising them.

Fighting, 500 “done”, 1500 to go. Let’s get this over with.

465 Kanji

The title says it all. I remember some, forget some, it’s impossible to tell how many, but I just keep marching forwards like there is no tomorrow. Where will this train wreck lead? Only time will tell. Will reach 500 today.